More, Sir Thomas

Sir Thomas (1478-1535), an English statesman and writer. He was born in London and educated at Oxford. He was a brilliant lawyer and became a member of Parliament. He opposed a demand for a royal subsidy. He served England as a diplomat and was for a time chancellor. He was a staunch Catholic. He refused to recognize Henry VIII as head of the church, and was beheaded therefor for treason. As a writer he is known as the author of Utopia, a Latin treatise on an ideal state in a land of nowhere. It was translated in 1551. This is the first political romance. It belongs to the same class of works as Bacon's New Atlantis and Bellamy's Looking Backward. See Utopia